Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “And Balbus?”

  “No. He doesn’t dream of it!”

  “By land or sea?”

  “None knows! Caesar never tells what he will do.”

  “And Horatius Verres waits for him, eh? — on my ship!”

  “Tros, Lord Tros, you promised—”

  “Go and talk to your Verres. Tell him I know he is Caesar’s spy. Say I will not interfere with him.”

  “I will not! If I admitted I had told you, he would cease to love me. He would say I am a common Gades dancing girl.”

  “Tell him I guessed he is Caesar’s spy.”

  “He would never believe. He is too keen. He can read me like writing.”

  “I have seen writings that deceived the reader,” Tros remarked and stroked his chin again.

  “Listen!” exclaimed Chloe. “Thus it happened: Caesar sent a thousand Gauls to Gades to be shipped to Rome for sale for his private account. Balbus put them in the quarries, where the most part died for he did not feed them properly and there was a fever. Caesar, receiving no word of the arrival of the slaves in Ostia, sent Horatius Verres to find out about it. He spied and he discovered that Pkauchios, pretending to have read the stars, told Balbus he might safely keep the slaves because Caesar will presently die.”

  “How did Verres discover that?” Tros asked.

  “I told him! Pkauchios makes prophecies come true. You understand me? He sent his own men to Gaul to murder Caesar. I knew all about it. I told Horatius Verres because he said he loves me, and I know that is the truth just as I know when an egg is fresh, just as I know I can trust you, Tros of Samothrace. But then I had to tell more, just as a witness has to when the torturers go to work. One piece of information led quite simply to the next. I told Horatius Verres how Pkauchios grew afraid that when Caesar is slain Balbus might turn on him and have him crucified for the sake of appearances. There are always plots on foot in Gades, so Pkauchios joined a conspiracy to murder Balbus. He began by merely listening and giving his advice, but now he leads it. And I am afraid! I am afraid Balbus may discover everything and put me to the torture. That is why I want my freedom quickly, quickly, why I want to get away from Gades!”

  “And Horatius Verres lies in hiding while all this is afoot?”

  “He hides from Pkauchios. Somebody, I don’t know who, warned Pkauchios, who put a dozen men to look for him and kill him. But he was hiding in the midst of danger, on the roof of the ergastulum.”

  “Hasn’t he tried to warn Balbus?”

  “He daren’t. Besides, what does he care about Balbus? He is Caesar’s man.”

  “What do you mean by ‘he daren’t’?”

  “Balbus would order his head cut off or have him stabbed or crucify him. As soon as Pkauchios learned there was a spy of Caesar’s in Gades, he pretended to read the stars and went to Balbus, saying there would come a Roman with a tale about conspiracies, but that the tale would be a lie and that the man’s real purpose would be to get Balbus into difficulties with the Roman Senate.”

  “And Balbus believed that?” Tros whistled softly to himself.

  “And the Lord Orwic is with Pkauchios? And, why waits Pkauchios?” he demanded. “Why hasn’t he slain Balbus?”

  “He likes others to do that work,” Chloe answered. “And the others are hard to bring up to the point. They are half mistrustful, and they fear the soldiers. It is always so in Gades — talk, talk, talk, and then some one at last dares it or else somebody betrays. There has been one betrayal already. Balbus has made some unimportant prisoners. But I think this time Pkauchios has his plans well laid and merely waits for the news of Caesar’s death. Then he will strike swiftly, and he thinks all Hispania and Gaul will rise together and throw off the Roman yoke.”

  Tros laughed.

  “Your Pkauchios can dream!” he said with irony. “When Gaul joins Hispania against the Romans we may look for the Greek Kalends! Divide — divide et impera! Go and talk to Horatius Verres in the hold. Reassure him and be swift about it. You shall take me to the courthouse to see Balbus, and thereafter to the house of Pkauchios.”

  She hesitated. There was indecision, terror in her eyes. Her muscles twitched at the thought of the Roman tortures. Tros nodded to her confidently.

  “You shall have your freedom and your pearls and your Horatius Verres before tomorrow’s dawn!”

  Chloe stared into his amber eyes, nodded to herself, and went down into the hold to do his bidding.

  CHAPTER 75. Pkauchios, the Astrologer

  It has been my destiny to speak with wise men, of whom there are more in the world than fools imagine. Though I comprehend not wisdom, I respect it; to salute it stirs in me no shame, whatever else. My sword and my whole heart are at wisdom’s bidding, if I find it. But the wise are wisely quiet. They forbid not, neither do they bid me to go storming after virtue, that being the impulse to which I yield because I know no better. Aye, I have met wise men. I have yet to meet one who dealt in treachery, or counseled treason, or pretended to know what he knew not.

  — from The Log of Tros of Samothrace

  CHLOE had pushed Orwic into a room in a marvelous marble house and left him face to face with Pkauchios, closing the curtains behind him on their noisy rings and rod. Orwic stared at the Egyptian, wondering at the severely splendid furnishings and at the quiet that was accented by lute strings strummed slowly in another room, suggesting the procession of the aeons and the utter insignificance of days-months-years.

  Pkauchios was dressed as an astrologer — a tall old man, immensely dignified, in flowing black robes and head-dress, with the asp of Egypt on his brow, to which Tros would have at once known he was not entitled. But Orwic knew nothing about Egypt. He had an hypnotic presence, and used his large eyes, as a swordsman should, directing his gaze not at the pupils of the man in front of him but a fraction of an inch lower, so producing the effect of an indomitable stare without wearying himself or giving his opponent a chance to retaliate.

  He possessed almost the majesty of a Lord Druid, but that only served to remind Orwic of the druids’ warnings about magic. He had been educated by the druids, and whatever else they taught, they were succinct and vehement in their instruction as to the danger of any contact with the black arts.

  Bridling at the calculated silence, Orwic broke it, asking curt, blunt questions:

  “You are Pkauchios? I am Orwic of Britain. You sent for me? You wish to speak to me? What do you wish to say?”

  There was no answer, no acknowledgment. Sweet-scented intense of lign- aloes burned on a tripod-table, and its blue smoke curled around the Egyptian until, where he stood in shadow, he began to look unearthly, and the human skull on another table near his right hand appeared to make grimaces, mocking the short-lived dreams of men.

  Orwic shrugged his shoulders and strolled to the open window. Down a vista between well-tended garden shrubbery he could see Tros’s ship at anchor, miles away. The sight encouraged him; he began to think of jumping through the window, measuring with his eyes the height of the wall at the end of the garden and calculating the distance to the beach. But the Egyptian spoke at last:

  “Orwic, Prince of Britain, fortune favors you!”

  The voice was resonant, arresting, but the Gaulish words were ill pronounced. Orwic remembered druids who had spoken in much the same terms more gently, and yet with infinitely greater majesty.

  “I was born lucky,” he answered over his shoulder, and then resumed his gaze out of the window.

  “Look at me. Look into my eyes,” said Pkauchios.

  “I admire the view,” said Orwic, and continued to admire it.

  Pkauchios ignored the snub and went on speaking as if Orwic had obeyed him. He badly mispronounced the Gaulish, but his voice compelled attention, and he was fluent.

  “I, who nightly read the stars, have read your destiny! I forewarned Balbus of the great ship with the golden serpent at her bow. The stars in their conjunction said that ship should — shall — must enter Ga
des harbor, and from out of her shall step one in whose hand is the destiny of Hispania and Gaul. I said, because the constellations indicated, that the man will be a prince from a far country, bold in war, young, handsome, destined to be lost in Gades but to be recovered by a stranger. Last night I told Balbus that the prince in the ship with the purple sails will arrive before dawn.”

  “Well. Here I am, but it is not my ship,” said Orwic, and began to whistle softly to himself. When he was a little boy the druids told him that was the simplest means of avoiding a magician’s snares.

  But magicians are not easily rebuffed. The business of snaring men in nets made of imagination implies a thick skin and persistence, along with an immeasurable, cynical contempt for the prospective victim’s powers of resistance.

  “You are indeed the man the stars foretold,” said Pkauchios with admiration in his voice. “Indifferent to flattery, not stirred by rumor, iron-willed! It is of such men that the gods make weapons when the tyrannies shall fall! I see your aura — purple as the sails of yonder ship!”

  He struck a bronze gong and the music in the next room ceased. The sound of the gong startled Orwic, for it resembled the clash of weapons. He turned suddenly to face the Egyptian, who was no longer standing but seated on a sort of throne, whose arms were the gilded tusks of elephants. There was a canopy above the throne that threw that corner into deeper shadow, and the Egyptian’s eyes appeared to blaze as if there were fire in them. In his lap he held a crystal ball, which he raised in both hands when he was sure that Orwic’s gaze was fixed on him.

  “Approach me!” he commanded. “Nay, not too close, or your shadow dims the astral light!”

  He was staring at the crystal, frowning heavily, brows raised, lips parted, eyes glaring. The effort he was making seemed to tax his powers almost beyond endurance.

  “You are the man!” he said at last, and sighing, set the crystal down on the table where the skull stood. His eyes had lost their frenzy suddenly. He leaned back, looking deathly weary, all the lines and wrinkles on his dark face emphasized by pallor.

  “You, who listen, never know what we, who look into the unseen, suffer for your sakes,” he said.

  Even his voice was aged. Orwic began to feel pity for him, and something akin to shame for his former rudeness.

  Pkauchios left the throne and walking forward wearily took Orwic by the arm. His manner was of age that leaned on youth with perfect confidence.

  “So, help me to that seat and sit beside me.”

  They sat down on a bench of carved ebony and Pkauchios leaned his back against the wall.

  “Youth! Youth!” he said. “With all the world before you! Age must serve youth. We who have struggled and are old may justify ourselves if we can guide youth through the dangers. Age and responsibility! If I should guide you wrongly, what responsibility were mine! I will say nothing. It is wiser. I will not foreshadow destiny.”

  Now that was something like the druids’ way of viewing interference with a man’s own privilege of living as he sees fit. Orwic began to feel a vague respect for the Egyptian and to wonder whether he had not misjudged him. He might, after all, be a seer. It was hardly reasonable to suppose that all the prophets were in Britain. However, Orwic was still cautious.

  “I don’t believe in magic,” he remarked.

  “Rightly! Rightly so!” said Pkauchios. “It is destruction. It will destroy the Romans. It has ruined nations without number. Fools, who know no better, call me a magician. When I tell the truth to them, they weary me with their demands for untruth. It is restful to meet you. Honest unbelief is sweeter to me that the dark credulity of those who seek nothing but their selfish ends. Your incredulity will melt. Their superstition toughens as it feeds on vice. But I must crave your pardon. I am a laggard host, forgetting the body’s needs in the absorption of a spiritual moment. You are hungry, I have no doubt.”

  He clapped his hands, and almost on the instant two slave girls appeared bearing trays heaped with refreshment. One of them washed Orwic’s hands and combed his hair; the other spread before him milk, fruit, nuts, three sorts of bread, butter, honey and preserves, whose very scent excited appetite.

  “I will return when you have refreshed yourself,” said Pkauchios. “We who commune with the stars eat little earthly food.”

  He left the room, but the slave girls stayed and converted Orwic’s first meal on foreign soil into an experience that melted his reserve. He began by being half ashamed to eat while the Egyptian fasted, remembering that the druids hardly ate at all during their periods of spiritual commune with the universe. He began to be almost sure that fasting was a sign of the Egyptian’s purity of purpose. It was incredible that such food as the slave girls set before him should not tempt a man with worldly motives — such as Orwic’s own, for instance.

  He began to confess to himself that he was having a glorious time, and he hoped Tros would not come for him too soon. Deeply though he admired Tros, loyal though he felt toward him, he dreaded Tros’s abrupt way of dispersing dreams and scattering side issues. He could imagine Tros’s contempt, for instance, for the slave girls. Orwic liked them.

  Used to slaves and serving-women in his own land, he had never dreamed of such attentions as these two dark-haired women lavished on him. They were beautiful, smiling, silent, exquisitely trained, but that was not the half of it. In Britain guests were made to feel that their comfort was the host’s one sole consideration, and the servants vied with one another to that end. But those two slave girls made a man feel that he owned them, that their very souls were his, that they would think his thoughts if he would only deign to half express them, and be overjoyed to be the mothers of his sons.

  It was bewildering at first, embarrassing; then gradually rather pleasant; presently as natural as if all other forms of hospitality were crude, uncivilized and no part of a nobleman’s experience. This was the way to live. It was no wonder that foreigners regarded Britons as barbarians, with their crude ideas of courtesy and the servants’ air of being members of the family instead of servants in the true sense of the word.

  One of the girls was on his knee when Pkauchios returned. She was wiping his mouth and moustache with a napkin. She removed herself in no haste, unembarrassed, curtsying to her master, helping the other girl at once to carry out the tray and dishes. Pkauchios took no notice of either of them, which seemed to Orwic to prove that the man was an aristocrat, if nothing else.

  “You are right, you are right,” said Pkauchios, taking a seat beside him. “You should have nothing to do with magic. It is safer to avoid true revelation than to listen to the false. But tell me why you came to Gades.”

  Orwic told him all of it; told him the whole story of how Caesar had invaded Britain and had been repulsed; and how Tros of Samothrace, for friendship and because his ship was built in Britain, had undertaken to go to Rome and by any means that should present themselves to deter Caesar from invading a second time.

  “Wonderful! Wonderful!” said Pkauchios when the tale was done and Orwic had finished his eulogiums of Tros. “All this and more I have seen written in the stars. You are a man of destiny. And yet—”

  He leaned into the corner, frowning. It appeared that the decision between right and wrong, between his own high standard of integrity and a convenient alternative was forming in his brain.

  “ — if I should tell you what else I have seen—”

  “Oh, you may as well tell me,” Orwic interrupted. “I am not a child. And besides, I will do nothing without consulting Tros.”

  “Do you not see,” said Pkauchios, “that if Hispania were to rebel against the Romans, Caesar’s army would be needed to prevent the Gauls from rising too?”

  “Yes, that seems obvious,” said Orwic. He was devoting at least half his attention to wondering where those slave girls were. The scent from the one who had sat on his knee still clung to his tunic. No British girls that he had known had ever smelled like that.

  “And if Caesar
were to die,” said Pkauchios.

  He paused, aware that Orwic was only partly listening to him. “And if Caesar were to die,” he repeated solemnly, then suddenly he gripped Orwic’s arm and leaning forward, fixing him with penetrating gaze, almost hissed the words:

  “Do you not see that you and Tros of Samothrace, with Hispania in red rebellion, north, south, east and west, could lead the insurrection into Gaul and stir the Gauls until they, too, rise against the Romans?”

  He sat back again and sighed.

  “All this,” he said, “and more, I have seen written in the stars. Sight must be given us that we may see. And yet—”

  “Such a deed would save Britain,” remarked Orwic. He was thinking now.

  He was still aware of the faint, delicious woman smell, but its effect on him was changing. There were thoughts of women whom a sword could win, quite other thoughts than Orwic was accustomed to, thoughts not exactly chivalrous but blended in with chivalry, suggesting that the rescue of the Gauls from Roman rule might lead to a delightful destiny. He began to wonder what Tros would have to say to the proposal and whether Tros, too, secretly, in the recesses of his heart, would not rather like the prospect of — well — of whatever victory might provide.

  “I should not be surprised at anything,” he said after a moment s pause. “When I left Britain it was to face my destiny, whatever it might be. Now that girl Chloe — is it true she is your slave?”

  Pkauchios’ answer was startling:

  “Do you covet her? Shall I give her to you?”

  It was almost too startling; it rearoused suspicion. Orwic eyed the Egyptian narrowly, turning over in his mind vague notions as to how much Chloe might be worth. He was not so stupid as to believe that offer genuine.

  “If you should do what the stars indicate you safely may do,” Pkauchios said mysteriously, “then by tomorrow’s dawn you will be all-powerful in Gades. I shall need your friendship then. To flaming youth in the hour of victory, what gift could be more suitable than Chloe? I am an old man. Her beauty means nothing to me.”